Cal State Fullerton’s dean of University Extended Education has been named provost and vice president for academic affairs during the search for a new university president.

Kari Knutson Miller, Cal State Fullerton’s dean of University Extended Education, has been named provost. (Photo courtesy of Cal State Fullerton)

Kari Knutson Miller, a professor of child and adolescent studies at the university since 1999, has agreed to take on the position for two and a half years, effective Jan. 2, the university announced to the public Monday.

Anil Puri, former dean of the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, will step down as interim provost after serving since July 2016.

It will likely take two and a half years to appoint a new permanent president to replace Mildred García, who is leaving to head the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and then to conduct a national search for a permanent provost, García said.

Knutson Miller said she is thrilled with her new role and looks forward to getting up to speed on what needs to be done.

“I moved to California to work for the CSU because I felt my values and my talents and my work – I felt connected to the space and the mission,” Knutson Miller said. She plans to assess “where we are, what we’re going to do, and think through the how.”

On Tuesday morning, Knutson Miller was still a little in shock, but a deluge of emails – including an animated clip created by an animation professor – was making it all seem more real.

She was looking forward to receiving more information from the chancellor’s office on an interim president.

“I’m enough aware of the work in progress and the work we need to do that I’m not romanticizing,” she said.

Knutson Miller, who is also associate vice president of international programs and global engagement, has served in leadership roles including department chair, member of the Academic Senate and chair of the planning, resources and budget committee.

She has been a member of the academic master plan committee and the 2013-18 strategic plan steering committee, and is co-chair of the strategic planning process for the university’s 2018-23 strategic plan. She was awarded the Faculty Leadership in Collegial Governance Award in 2013.

Reporting on the interesting research and stimulating events at Cal State Fullerton is right up Wendy’s journalistic alley. A San Francisco native, Wendy earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Stanford and a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley. After working in the news offices at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC San Francisco Medical Center, she became a business/technology reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal and served as business editor at the Daily Breeze before moving to copy editing and working for the Seattle Times. She joined the Register in 2003, where she was a team leader on the copy desk until early 2017. She teaches copy editing at Chapman University part-time, has two grown children and lives in downtown Anaheim, where she can walk to yoga and good coffee.

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